


you taste like death

by sessrumnir



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Dark, Gore, Graphic Description, M/M, Serial Killer Shane, canon-compliant for the most part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 20:02:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13842000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sessrumnir/pseuds/sessrumnir
Summary: Ryan knew there was something wrong from the start. And he loved it.





	you taste like death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MPhoenix7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MPhoenix7/gifts).



> so! unabashed gore + some mildly explicit sex. this is for my gore lovers out there. *blows kiss*

The first time they met, Ryan thought he was weird.

Not quirky weird, or fun weird. The guy sitting next to him, rearranging the contents of his desk, face as innocent as it could probably get, had something about him that rubbed Ryan the wrong way. 

It wasn’t anything about his appearance, although the guy looked too thin for someone that tall. Ryan tried not to think too much about it. Maybe they’d get new desks soon enough, and wouldn’t have to talk much after that. Maybe Ryan had just been too anxious to get a proper first impression, and was just feeling a little off about his new surroundings.

He came up with plenty of explanations, but they were all wrong.

It didn’t become clear until years later. They were friends now, and Ryan could still sometimes catch a glimpse of what he had seen that first day. Some sort of imbalance. Eyes that wouldn’t catch up in time with his smile. Laughter that ended in an off-key waver sounding just short of unnatural. No one seemed to notice it, but Ryan did. He watched Shane from the corner of his eyes sometimes, wondering. Trying to read the unreadable, like he didn’t know the language Shane was written in. 

He learned the language, eventually.

Or just enough to see more of that shimmering emptiness, the hollow that seemed to hide somewhere within Shane. His coworker, his friend, his lover. Because eventually they found themselves in each other’s arms, and it felt so natural they never quite addressed it. It felt to Ryan like they were destined to be, but that couldn’t apply to them.

No, if anything, they were meant to never be.

He came to that conclusion the third time he found smeared blood on Shane’s skin. 

He barely took notice of the first, dismissing it as a scratch. The second was a bit stranger, and there was no visible wound anywhere on Shane to justify the dried up blood on his collar, just underneath his black shirt. 

The third time, it was kinda hard to miss. 

“Did you hurt yourself?” Ryan could hear the worry in his voice as he touched, gently, Shane’s stomach. There was a streak of dry blood going from Shane’s hip bones to his ribs, almost as if he had been splashed with it. 

Shane didn’t answer. He just looked into Ryan’s eyes, relaxed as ever. And in that moment, a chill ran down Ryan’s spine. He felt challenged, like Shane was daring him to go on, to ask him about it. To question him on whose blood that was. 

Feeling his own pulse quickening, Ryan kissed him again.

 

* * *

 

Ryan didn’t need to ask about the blood. He understood enough, and he saw enough in Shane’s empty, blazing eyes. Sometimes Ryan questioned his own sanity - maybe he had been entertaining the possibilities too much; maybe he had lost control of what was fantasy and what was real. But when he caught Shane’s gaze on him, watching, observing, he knew that was real. He knew. 

He only ever saw Shane lose control once. He had knocked on Ryan’s door late at night, sweating profusely. Ryan pretended not to see the cuffs of his shirt stained dark. He took a step back when Shane started to pace around in his living room, growling, roaring in fury over whatever got him in that state. 

It was a few minutes until Shane finally,  _ finally _ looked at Ryan, anger clear in the lines of his lips. He started towards Ryan, but Ryan flinched and stumbled back, and that made Shane stop immediately.

“Please, don’t hurt me.”

Ryan’s voice was quiet, calm; he surprised himself. He thought he would be more scared, frightened, maybe running out of his own apartment by now. But he felt firm on his feet. He held Shane’s gaze. 

“Ryan…” Shane paused, eyebrows burrowing in confusion. Hurt. “I’d never— I’d never do that.” 

“Ever?”

“Not unless you asked me to.” 

He sounded so earnest that a nervous laugh slipped past Ryan’s lips. He feared he would start giggling, but nothing about that conversation warranted that. The cuffs were still bloodied. Not dry. 

“And if I asked you?” 

Shane’s eyes scanned his face, mouth curving into the softest, more out-of-place smile he had ever seen. 

“We’ll see when we get there.” 

* * *

 

 

“Your mouth…” Ryan said once, grinding his hips against Shane’s, sitting on top of him as the party went on outside the room. “You taste like…” 

“Like what?”

_ Like blood _ , Ryan wanted to say, the words clear as day in his head.  _ You taste like the wet splotch in your jeans, like the hoodie you left at my place two months ago. You taste like you always have, only stronger, only bolder, like you wanted me to feel this. You wanted me to find it on your tongue, and to ask you about it. You taste like danger. You taste like death. _

“You taste like you,” he replied, grinding harder. 

 

* * *

 

 

The shift was noticeable, but natural. 

The things Shane texted him started to get weirder, verging on horrifying. Ryan stopped checking his texts at work - mostly because he didn’t want anyone to see him opening a link with severed heads as the preview, but also because it distracted him. It had him thinking about what Shane was doing, about his motives for doing that, and before he knew it, Ryan could feel himself getting hard. 

It was wrong. Awful. Nothing like he stood up for. And yet, when Shane waltzed into the office, greeting people with a warm smile and friendly eyes, Ryan couldn’t help himself. He was in love with Shane. Deeply, insanely in love. 

Somehow, filming went on. The show thrived, and no one wondered why Ryan was always so agitated during True Crime seasons. No one questioned the way he looked frantically over his shoulder when he and Shane were alone at old, haunted houses. They thought he was just overplaying his fear of ghosts.

They never considered that he might be scared of Shane, too. 

Shane, however, had kept his promise. He never went too far with Ryan. They liked it rough sometimes, and they played with boundaries, but Ryan never lost any blood, nor did he sport any marks outside of the bedroom. 

Until the day he asked for just that. 

“Not yet,” Shane said. He brushed the hair out of Ryan’s eyes, lovingly. “But soon.” 

“Please.” 

“Soon, babe. Soon.” 

 

* * *

 

 

Ryan thought he was prepared, but reality was much harder to endure than his fantasies. 

The woman was still twitching, trying to breathe through the gurgling blood spilling from her throat. Shane had her on his lap, sitting on the floor of his pristine kitchen. 

There was blood everywhere. Spilling from her, dripping from Shane’s arms and torso, pooling around them. It looked awful. It looked beautiful. Ryan felt his stomach lurching, and he worried for a second he would throw up, but he managed to keep it together. 

Shane was trying to soothe her, shushing her cries, using one bloodied hand to brush the dirty blond hair from her face. Ryan’s breath caught in his throat. He was getting hard. Nauseous, slightly dizzy, but his dick was responding to the scene in front of him. 

Their eyes met for the briefest moment before Shane dipped his head and latched onto her neck. He sucked on the wound, and Ryan could see his adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he drank, gurgled himself on the life leaving her body. There were no fangs, no horns, no tails. Ryan had to remind himself that it was Shane, just Shane, and not a creature come to life from the darkest recess of his mind. 

It was just Shane, drinking the oozing blood from the throat of the stranger he had just killed. 

The woman finally went limp, and Shane licked his way up the column of her neck slowly, deliberately. He was making a mess of himself, but he didn’t seem too concerned about it. After what felt like ages to Ryan, he let the body - a body, not a woman, not a person, just a body now - fall to the floor. The blood was still pooling around him, and as he turned his eyes to Ryan, the latter thought it looked just like a painting. 

The nation’s most beautiful tragedy. 

Before he could register it, he was kneeling down next to Shane. His jeans soaked up the warm blood, and his fingers felt the dampness on Shane’s shirt as he pulled him closer and kissed him. The taste was almost unbearable, but Ryan was hard, and he was scared, and he wanted to feel what Shane was feeling. He wanted to drink it too, not the blood, but the excitement. The elated look on Shane’s face, his eyes dark and alive with what Ryan had only seen glimpses of. 

He looked perfect, and Ryan was sure now that they were never meant to be. There was no place for them in the world.

Which is why they had to make it themselves. Together. Side by side. 

He voiced that later, as he got closer and closer to the edge, fisting Shane’s cock and feeling the man’s beard scratching the junction between his neck and his shoulder. The hand on his own dick was warm, slick, and Ryan didn’t have to look down to know it, but he did, because he wanted to see it - he wanted to see Shane’s hand covered in blood pumping him hard, fast, and then he was coming, free hand trying to find purchase on the tiles underneath him and accidentally brushing against cold skin. 

Shane came hard on top of him, and Ryan knew it wouldn’t take long for them to continue on. 

From then on, Ryan was always there. Or as much as possible - Shane had rules, and Ryan was happy to follow them. The last thing he wanted was to mess things up. But he never did, and soon, finally,  _ thankfully _ , Shane was breaking his skin and tasting his life. It was everything Ryan hoped it would be, and better. He cried tears of joy the first time, and never ceased to feel like he had been given the greatest gift in existence.  _ Thank you, thank you, thank you _ , he’d say.  _ Anything. Anything for you _ , Shane would whisper back, mouth red. 

One day, Shane declared they had to move places. It wasn’t safe anymore, hadn’t been for a while now, but they had such a great life there. Los Angeles was their home, and the show had been a constant success. 

“We should go,” Ryan decided, kissing Shane’s knuckles. 

Peeling his eyes from the film they had been watching, Shane watched his face. The expression that used to be unreadable was so clear then. Ryan could see the mask Shane had always on top of his own face, always there to keep things safe from prying eyes. Ryan had mastered the language, and the thought made him smile. 

Shane smiled, too. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I’d go to the end of the world with you.” 

A kiss, and Ryan caught himself thinking about the absence of the taste of copper. 

“Let’s go, then,” said Shane. 

They never looked back. 


End file.
